Possible to have non-allied enemies fight amongst each other as well as against charname (& friends)
Blackraven
Member Posts: 3,486
Today my elven f/t/m soloist was exploring the Lighthouse area (why o why would she do such a thing...?) when she met with a couple of sirens. Luckily she still had a potion of clarity she had secured in Candlekeep, to prevent herself from being dire charmed. The encounter looked to be turning out favourably for my Eiloisia until a number of Hobgoblins started to attack her with arrows of biting and managed to poison her.
This encounter made me realize that it's not realistic that all types of enemies of the protagonist act in all circumstances as allies in fighting the protagonist. In the above-mentioned example it doesn't make much sense to me that the sirens attack the protagonist on sight and at the same time accept the filthy hobgoblins in their territory. Throughout the game there are more examples: wild animals (bears, wolves) attacking the protagonist but never the bandits he/she is fighting, undead always working together with other enemies the protagonist encounters, etc.
I think it would make the game more realistic and less predictable (and also possibly eaiser, I realize) if it allowed for 'infighting' amongst some of the protagonist's (non-allied) enemies. Would this be possible to implement?
This encounter made me realize that it's not realistic that all types of enemies of the protagonist act in all circumstances as allies in fighting the protagonist. In the above-mentioned example it doesn't make much sense to me that the sirens attack the protagonist on sight and at the same time accept the filthy hobgoblins in their territory. Throughout the game there are more examples: wild animals (bears, wolves) attacking the protagonist but never the bandits he/she is fighting, undead always working together with other enemies the protagonist encounters, etc.
I think it would make the game more realistic and less predictable (and also possibly eaiser, I realize) if it allowed for 'infighting' amongst some of the protagonist's (non-allied) enemies. Would this be possible to implement?
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Comments
A lot of times you come across enemies of different sorts who both seem to hate you above all else and are completely oblivious to each other despite an otherwise natural antagonism between them as well. It's like everyone's out to get only my party! Am I just paranoid?
Like Peldvale's giant spiders. Do bandits raise them as pets? If you run from the spiders and get seen by bandits you could easily get forced to rush the bandit archers with the spider right on you... but why isn't the spider interested in bandit blood as well? Or the spiders in that last cavern beneath Candlekeep where you can get them on you while battling that merc group only to discover they have a mysterious aversion to merc blood as well. Now spiders and undead both hungry for the party and uninterested in each other (other than elbowing their way to get at you first) makes at least a little sense, but that's not the usual lot. What about an angry Flaming Fist who chases you into some wild dogs which apparently have become a Fist's best friend? Or into gibberlings who wouldn't exactly spare the Fist, much less favor your characters over him... Too many examples.
Mind you, when I say "faction," I'm thinking of how NWN1 works, not really knowing the BG enemy/ ally assignment system, but making different groups of red-circles more discriminating about who their allies are would enable you to set enemies against each other... which would, mind you, be more realistic and could make for quite a lot of fun havoc... and lost XP, but still.... It'd be way more realistic.
The mod "aTWEAKS" does this with fiends: whenever a baatezu and a tanar'ri are in proximity of one another, they make slaying each other a top priority as per their P&P behavior (which is consistent with the Blood War thing going on between them).
You can also justify these scenarios by saying that you all happen across each other simultaneously and they all happen to regard you as the most dangerous threat.
Plus xvarts have it rough enough as it is without their pet basiliks turnings on them. You of all people Bhryaen should know that.
No, I admit that as "broken" as the faction system seems to be regarding creatures that ought to be attacking each other, there doesn't seem to be any way to correct that. Actually all I'd really want to push for is some kind of more realistic travel spawn calculation. Sure, it's more challenging to have kobold commandos, bassilisks, and sword spiders at the same time... it's just too ridiculous to look at. I mean, I refuse to die for that. It feels like the DM is just being an idiot to mess with me.
So I suppose you're right: the faction system seems like it could be a cesspool to mix into. Instead the only concrete thing I'd advocate specifically would be new random encounter parameters that link those of like type, and you know there are potent archer/melee combos among the humanoids and undead, as well as mage/melee combos with the ogrekin. I'll have to rework this thread and do a new one for just the travel spawn encounters. Just as an example though the spawn groupings could include...
- wyverns (on their own)
- spiders, ettercaps
- ghouls, ghasts, skeletons
- bandits, gnolls, hobgoblins, kobolds, Black Talon Elites
- ogres, ogrillons, ogre mages
- wild and war dogs, wolves, maybe bears
- xvarts and dragons
Similar stuff like that. ;-)
I don't have a BG instalation atm (just make a format on my pc a week ago) so i can't open shadowkeeper to point in the right place, but i had a problem a time ago playing with saerileth mode, that make her go perm hostile to my party after a bant, while passing trough some monster even if her was the only person visible (she's still in my party but perm hostile) the monsters don't attack her, after some time i tried to fix the problem myself, so i opened ShadowKeeper and in the characters SK screen has at the bottom left (if i remember correct) a script behavior for each character, saerileth for some bug reason has her behavior changed to "hostile" or something like that, i just changed that to the default option and my problem was solved.
What i mean with this is that maybe the original infinity engine could not set a monster faction for a lack in its program, maybe the new Infinity Engine solve this, but i really dunno.
@Tanthalas
1. sentients (humanoids, giants etc.) -- hostile to animals, undead and misc
*ex: an elf and an ogre ally against the player, but an elf and a bear don't
2. animals -- hostile to sentients and misc; probably should try to keep at a distance from undead (but hostility would be ok too)
*ex: wolves and snakes ally against the player, but wolves and zombies don't
3. undead -- hostile to sentients, animals and misc
*ex: a vampire and a ghost ally with each other but a vampire and a quasite don't
4. misc -- hostile to everything except their own race (or genus, so sword spiders won't attack wraith spiders, fire elementals won't attack greater fire elementals etc.)
*these would be pretty much all the different monstrous, abberant or mindless creatures; also elementals, demons etc.
*ex: an ochre jelly and an umber hulk attack everything including each other (and everything else attacks them)
0. no faction -- hostile only to player
*ex: a trap-activated golem and a summoned shadow attack the player, they ignore each other and everything else (and everything else ignores them)
some additional rules: summoned monsters fight for their masters, bred creatures and trained animals too, enslaved creatures may fight for their captor (for example, enslaved duergar will serve their demonic master), sentries attack tresspassers...
I'm curious to what extent your idea already exists in the game. I don't know why or if it was a glitch or something, but earlier today in my current BG2 game, a cowled wizard killed a shadow thief with a lightning bolt. At first I thought it was targeted at me, but the shadow thief was way off to the side, far away from the battle and was just shooting at me with a crossbow while I was in a spell duel with the wizard. The cowled wizard cast the lightning bolt in the opposite direction of my characters in order to hit the thief. I haven't really noticed things like this before, so I don't know how common it is. Your question reminded me.
In MMOG's, I really like AI like this, because it makes the world feel alive, as if I'm not the only one with enemies. The one bad part about it in a single player game is NPC's would be killing each other all over the world, leaving little for the PC to gain experience on.
If they improve the difficult of the game (something that is VERY NEEDED), enemies fighting among themselfs could become a tactic to be used, to solve some fights in an inteligent way, besides we normally reach the experience cap very fast normally, Durlag's tower normally take care of that.
You could also make some rules in the game mechanics, that NPC fighting with eachother (due to the different "factions") deal only 30% normal damage. But when they attack your team or "blue circles", they do 100% damage.
Oh, BTW. Look at first two Fallouts. There were factions. You could often see them fighting with eachother... and with you. So it's not that bad idea, to implement to BG...